The Instructor 1.12.99

For we are instructed not in war but in peace. War needs much preparation, and luxury requires abundance; but peace and love, simple and quiet sisters, need no weapons and no extravagant preparation. The Word is their food, the Word to whom the guidance that shows and instructs has been allotted, from whom we learn frugality and freedom from arrogance, and the whole love of freedom, of humanity, and of the beautiful, in a word, being made like God through kinship with virtue. Labor, then, and do not grow weary; for you will be such as you do not hope for, nor could even imagine. As there is one training of philosophers, another of orators, and another of wrestlers, so there is a noble disposition, suited to a will that loves the beautiful, which comes from the instruction of Christ; and trained in its activity, our walk, our reclining, our food, our sleep, our bed, our way of life, and the rest of our conduct appear dignified. For such training is not overstrained